Music festivals are often the highlight of summer plans, but recently there's been increased attention on incidents of sexual assault that, sadly, often happen on site. The Bravalla Festival, a popular music festival in Sweden, has already been cancelled for 2018 after 27 sexual assaults were reported at this summer's event. Meanwhile, other organizers are looking to create spaces just for women on the festival grounds—or "man-free" festivals altogether. Frankly, it's terrible that things have gotten to that point—after all, the problem is with the assaulters, not the women.
But at a festival in the Netherlands on Friday night, one singer, Sam Carter, made the issue of sexual assault a visible and public one when he called out a "disgusting" sexual assault he'd witnessed in the crowd of his show with some choice words that made it clear that he wanted his show to be a safe space for all.
The Architects were performing at the Lowlands music festival when Carter spotted a man "grab at" the breast of a woman who was crowdsurfing. After the song ended, he paused to address the incident and let the crowd know that there was nothing OK about it.
"I've been going over in my f-cking mind about whether I should say something or not about what I saw in that last song, and do you know what, I'm gonna f-cking say it," Carter told the crowd. "I saw a girl, a woman, crowdsurfing over here, and I'm not going to f-cking point the piece of sh-t out who did it, but I saw you f-cking grab at her boob. It is f-cking disgusting, and there is no f-cking place for that sh-t."
The crowd seemed to be in agreement; they clapped and whistled their support before the singer continued. "It is not your f-cking body," he said, getting louder. "It is not your f-cking body and you do not f-cking grab at someone! Not at my f-cking show!"
"If you feel like doing that again, walk out there and f-ck off and don't come back," he said, indirectly addressing the culprit before adding: "Let's keep this going, let's keep this a f-cking safe place for everybody, and let's have a f-cking good time."
A video of Carter's impassioned speech quickly went viral after it was shared on Twitter by the Dutch public radio channel NPO 3FM, and it got a huge response—particularly from those who took to the platform to express gratitude that Carter spoke out. (It's probably clear from the quotes, but you might not want to crank the audio up over the office speakers.)
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Many expressed their gratitude to Carter for speaking out:
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It's beyond awful that in 2017, some men still feel like they're entitled to women's bodies—but hats off to Carter for stepping up and calling out the assault he saw. Here's hoping that more organizers and people like him will continue fighting to make music festivals a safer environment for everyone.
Related Stories:
—The Sexual Assault Epidemic Is Ruining Music Festivals for Me
—Swedish Women Plan 'Man-Free' Music Festival to Prevent Sexual Assault
